The United Nations agency called for changing behavior through education programmes and training more health workers and police to investigatesigns of mistreatment.

"Women are more at risk from violence involving people they know at home than from strangers in the street. There is a feeling that the home is a safe haven and that pregnancy is a very protectedperiod, but that is not the case," WHO's director-general Lee Jong-Wook told a news conference.

"Domestic violence remains largely hidden."

The Women's Health and Domestic Violence Against Women study is based on interviews with more than 24,000 women in 10 countries, ranging from Japan and Thailand to Ethiopia and Peru.

A Peruvian woman lost twins after being hit in the stomach by the father of her unborn babies, while a Brazilian sleeps in a locked bedroom to protect herself from the partner who has threatened to shoot her, according to the report.

Domestic violence can be sparked by dinner being late, not finishing the housework on time, disobeying or refusing to have sex, the report said. In many cases women agree that a man is justified in beating his wife under certain circumstances.

"Whether you are a cosmopolitan woman in Sao Paulo, Brazil or Japan, or a rural woman in Ethiopia or Peru, the association between violence and poor health remains," she told reporters.

"The striking thing we found is the degree that this violence still remains hidden. Between one-fifth and two-thirds of women interviewed had never spoken before to anyone of the experience of their partner's violence," she added.

Other countries covered in the 7-year study, issued on the eve of the U.N.'s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, included Samoa, Bangladesh, Namibia, Tanzania and Serbia and Montenegro.

Between 4 and 12 percent of women who had been pregnant reported being beaten during pregnancy -- more than 90 percent by the father of the unborn child, according to the report.

"Most of the violence that pregnant women were experiencing is a continuation of the violence going on before," said Lori Heise, a member of the core research team from the Washington-based group PATH.

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